The present invention generally relates to a visual information retrieval and registration system using a display device, and more particularly to a system for effecting retrieval and registration of visual information with respect to an image file by indicating image data registration and retrieval on an image reproduced on a display device.
Today, very remakable and extensive progress has been made in image processing techniques in various fields such as office automation, satellite communication and medical image filing systems. Particularly, in the medical field, a technique for processing wide particularities and large variety of images has not yet been established. In the medical field various investigations have been conducted in visual information processing which can be applied to various apparatus for obtaining medical images such as endoscopic photography, X-ray photography, X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT), RI imaging, ultrasonic computed tomography (ultrasonic CT), digital radiography, and nuclear magnetic resonance computed tomography (NMR-CT). In the case of processing medical images, storage, retrieval, transfer and processing of image data can not presently be performed by uniformly classifying them into items such as parts of body and kinds of diseases due to the very wide variety of medical images. That is to say, there are two kinds of attributes for the medical image, i.e. attributes such as patient ID, test dates, and type of imaging apparatus which belong to the image itself and thus can be utilized as keywords and attributes such as diseases and parts of body which belong to a particular patient itself and thus require understanding and judgement of the images.
There has been proposed a medical image processing system which may be used as a medical visual data retrieval system. M. Komori et al have proposed such a system in a report issued on the fourteenth Image Engineering Conference held on December, 1983, pp. 59 to 62. FIG. 1 is a schematic view showing a construction of such a visual image processing system. The system is composed of a host system serving as an image database unit and a retrieval subsystem. Reference numeral 11 denotes a console for entering various attributes of medical images and retrieval commands. The system further comprises a host CPU processing the image database unit, and a front end processor 13 for controlling a world view display 15 and a user view display 16. The world view display 15 is connected to a digitizer 14 which serves as a pointing device. In this known retrieval system, a data space which contains an object to be retrieved is divided into three hierarchies, a first hierarchy for all the data stored in the image database, a second hierarchy consisting of a data space for all data of a patient indexed by a patient ID, and a third hierarchy for a next generation. The image displayed by the world view display 15 is called the world view, because the data in the second hierarchy can be selected by all users. The image displayed on the user view display 16 is named the user view because a selected image is displayed on a screen of the user view display as a retrieval result. The retrieval system thus constructed presents to a user a data space "which can be seen by the eyes of user", from which an image space (user view) is visually constructed. The retrieval is carried out in accordance with the following four steps; formation of the world view, processing in the world view, formation of the user view and display of an original image. The formation of the world view includes sending from the console 11 to the host CPU 12 a patient ID and requires a transmission of abstract images. The transmitted images are classified into groups of imaging apparatus for the sake of convenience and are displayed. The operation in the world view is to select a required image from the displayed world view images with the aid of the digitizer 14 and requires a transmission of the relevant image into the user view display 16. The formation of the user view includes the display of the retrieval result on the user view display 16 by means of the operation of the world view display 15. Then, the user can require a display of a particular original image by monitoring the abstract image i.e. retrieval result displayed on the user view display 16. Then, the world view on the display 15 is erased, and an original image, i.e. a detailed image is displayed on the world view display 15. The user view is still displayed on the display 16, and thus the abstract of retrieval result (user view) and the detail image (original image) are simultaneously displayed. The world view display 15 and user view display 16 may be constructed by image display devices NEXUS 6400 (trade name) and NEXUS 5400 (trade name), respectively.
In the known retrieval system explained above, since the world view display 15 comprises only one frame of memory, and therefore the position of display on the screen can not be changed. That is to say, when the position of display is to be altered, it is necessary to transmit again one frame of the world view from the host CPU 12 and thus the change in the display position can be performed only with difficulty and inconvenience. Further, in the known retrieval system, private attributes such as parts of body and diseases are different for each patient, and thus it is difficult to perform the retrieval in accordance with private attributes. For instance, if a group gastric examination has been conducted by taking endoscopic images of, for example two hundred patients by means of an endoscopic photographying apparatus, the obtained endoscopic images may be recorded on a video tape or magnetic disc separately for each patient and various data processings can be conducted on the basis of the recorded images. It has been earnestly desired by clinical and pathological doctors to develop and establish a novel data processing system for effecting various queries, i.e. how many patients suffer from gastric ulcer, what is the most characteristic part of the gastric ulcer, how many patients suffer from a disease at a predetermined part of body and what diseases are found for each parts of body of a patient. However, such a system has not been established yet.